Sitting, Teething and Not Sleeping

It’s a very busy time for us here at the Benoit household. Hazel has gone from sleeping 10-12 hour stretches straight through the night to sleeping for 4-5 hours, waking up screaming, eating, then back to sleep for 3-5 hours, lather, rinse and repeat until 6 or 7 am. It has been exhausting, partly because I have been pretty sick for the past week or so. I seem to have some sort of sinus infection/lingering strep throat malady that just won’t quit. Fortunately, I think I’m on the tail end of this thing and I am hoping that with a bit more rest I’ll be back up and running soon!

This sleep disturbance has been a bit surprising as it seems to have come out of no where. Usually when Hazel is going through some sort of growth spurt or is reaching a developmental milestone, her sleep schedule goes out the window for a day or two- but this time it has been almost ten days of middle of the night wakefulness. I know that there is a major sleep regression between 4-5 months due to some of the developmental stuff her little brain is trying to process, but it seems like this has been above and beyond what we might expect for that sort of thing. Joanna mentioned in a note to me the other day that she thinks Hazel could be teething- this is something I’ve tried to push to the back of my mind, as the thought of nursing a baby with teeth scares the bejeeezus out of me- but I think she might be right! Hazel has a little white spot on her bottom gum and it looks like there is a tooth in there just waiting to cut through.

So all this hard work on Hazel’s part, what with the constant waking and eating and wanting to be held, never comes without its reward. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, all of these fussy, wakeful, irritable times always end up happening just before something new and exciting emerges in Hazel’s world. This time I think it might be more mental than physical- according to some of my development books there are major things going on in Hazel’s brain right now, most importantly she is learning how to distinguish patterns and her brain is starting to figure out cause and effect. I can only imagine how challenging this must be for her- although she doesn’t know that she’s being challenged. She is starting to realize that when she chews on her fingers it hurts, but when she chews on mom or dad’s fingers it just feels good.

Aside from the important brain stuff that’s going on right now (sorry to use such clinical terms), Hazel is also approaching some physical milestones. She is almost able to sit up completely unassisted! Here is some evidence- taken this past week. She has become quite adept at tripoding herself with her hands to make sure she doesn’t topple over.

I can’t tell you how proud we are that she is able to sit now- it makes her so happy too because it gives her a completely different outlook on our world.

We’ve taken a few great videos this weekend of Hazel and I hope to post them sometime this week so be sure to check back often!

Filed under Pregnancy by esther |